Where brevity is literary minimalism®

Writer’s Digest Wednesday Poetry Prompt #417: Complicit

Family Tie Breaker

They’d each been complicit
in the depression of one man:
one sister,
her lack of understanding,
the other,
her lack of empathy;
an uncle,
a lack of respect,
and three cousins,
who wore grotesque
carnival masks of
indifference,
the two people
who he hoped were the
best parts of him
having long since
crumbled
into
ash.

He had a wife who,
because of this,
tried to understand,
and a daughter who was
special
but not needy.
Her parents accepted him,
her grandmother loved him.
They were his family now.